I have met people who have acted poisonously, who have behaved abominably to me and others, while believing they were completely in the right so to do. I'm sure you have too. I've been driven to tears and rage and despair by the actions of people I might have called poisonous. But I've never yet been driven to sticking the skull and crossbones label on them and thereby warning people to have nothing to do with them, and I hope never to do so.
That's not innocence or purity, that's necessity. Because if people can be non-people, or poisonous people, or inferior people, or damned-thing people, or unsaved people or whatever...then that's me, right there. For my own sanity, I have to believe that all people are people, no more and no less, or I can't be a person. I don't expect anyone else to be so handicapped, nor do I judge anyone else on what they believe, see above. This is just the way it works, for me.
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branchandroot
no subject
Date: 2009-08-25 03:16 am (UTC)I have met people who have acted poisonously, who have behaved abominably to me and others, while believing they were completely in the right so to do. I'm sure you have too. I've been driven to tears and rage and despair by the actions of people I might have called poisonous. But I've never yet been driven to sticking the skull and crossbones label on them and thereby warning people to have nothing to do with them, and I hope never to do so.
That's not innocence or purity, that's necessity. Because if people can be non-people, or poisonous people, or inferior people, or damned-thing people, or unsaved people or whatever...then that's me, right there. For my own sanity, I have to believe that all people are people, no more and no less, or I can't be a person. I don't expect anyone else to be so handicapped, nor do I judge anyone else on what they believe, see above. This is just the way it works, for me.